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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346262">blown stars and broken light</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Captivity, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Panic Attacks, Pining, Unresolved Tension, shiro and the terrible no good very bad astral plane adventure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:41:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,508</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346262</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere far away from all the noise, in the quiet place inside his head, the Champion thinks of shaggy black hair and a familiar face, sharp angles made sharper in the faint, distant glow of the night sky, and a bony shoulder digging into his arm as they sit side by side on shifting blue sand.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith/Shiro (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>blown stars and broken light</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Champion steps into the gladiator pit and the crowd cheers. </p><p>They say you can tell a lot about a slave by the way he holds himself before a fight. Some are defiant, their shoulders squared and their head held high. Some are more cautious. Some scuttle like mice in a trap. </p><p>The Champion moves slowly, his eyes low, white blades of light cutting across his face and momentarily blinding him after days spent in the semi-darkness of his cell. He’s not escorted by a guard like most of the newest fighters are; he walks alone, not wearing any armor, his shoulders a taut line under his prisoner rags.</p><p>His opponent is already waiting for him. He's Galra and a soldier, or at least that's what his stance says, which means he must be either a defector or a rebel. </p><p>Fingers curl around the hilt of a sword. In a quiet place inside his head, the Champion thinks of a name.</p><p>A drum stroke. It means: <i>begin</i>. His opponent jerks his body forward - feigning an attack, gauging his reaction. He doesn't get one.</p><p>The Champion waits. </p><p>It doesn't take long before the other man is moving again, and he's not faking this time. Shifting feet raise a low cloud of dust from the ground.</p><p>They fight. </p><p>The crowd cheers.</p><p>Stories get passed around quickly when it comes to events in the arena, and with every retelling, the story of any good fight gets that much more extraordinary. Myzax's defeat was bound to become a tale for the years to come from the moment the Champion's sword had pierced his chest.</p><p>Some say the Champion let out a terrifying war cry as he struck down his enemy. Some say he didn't make a sound. New spectators hang on the edge of their seats during his fights, hoping to catch a glimpse of feral red eyes, of the way some say the Champion smiles when he's about to claim his kill. </p><p>There's a dull, clanging sound as two weapons meet, but one is faster to strike when they come apart. A blade cuts through pale skin.</p><p>The Champion hisses in pain, and a word escapes his lips that his opponent does not recognize. It's a foul word, a <i>human</i> word, like the cough of a wounded animal. The soldier gets complacent, and he attacks again.</p><p>He swings his weapon to the left, trying to go for the side or maybe a leg - the spectators never do find out, because in doing so, he's left his own right side completely exposed. And the Champion never misses an opening, or so the stories say.</p><p>The blow is swift and strong, and it strikes true. The soldier falls without a sound other than his knees hitting the ground, and the Champion follows.</p><p>He brings his right arm down once, twice. </p><p>His opponent doesn't get up. </p><p>Coarse screams echo off the walls of the arena. </p><p>Somewhere far away from all the noise, in the quiet place inside his head, the Champion thinks of shaggy black hair and a familiar face, sharp angles made sharper in the faint, distant glow of the night sky, and a bony shoulder digging into his arm as they sit side by side on shifting blue sand.</p><p><i>It’s going to be fine</i>, the Champion thinks deliriously, in a warm, kind voice that doesn’t sound his own, and laughter rattles in his throat as he hoists himself up from the bloodied floor, favoring his uninjured arm.</p><p>Tears sting his eyes. </p><p>The crowd cheers. </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Days blur into one another inside his cell.</p><p>He tried to count them at first. From memory, then by scratching lines against a wall. He lost track for a while after his first time in the arena, as he lay curled up on the floor in a pool of unchanging purple light for what seemed like an eternity, his dislocated shoulder throbbing in pain. They didn’t set it right until his next fight. </p><p>The second time something happened to his arm, he lost count for good.</p><p>Sometime soon the horror of not knowing will catch up to him again, and blind panic will crawl its way up his throat, leaving him nauseous and gasping for air. </p><p>His mind is a heavy, treacherous thing, echoing with fear and nightmares. It’s also all that he has left, and holds the one place where he can still hide.</p><p>In his worst moments, it helps more than he can say; the small but unwavering certainty that no matter what happens, they won’t be able to take it from him – nor will pain, or time. He would know the place before he knew himself, and if he somehow lost himself beyond all saving, he would still have this. </p><p>Sand under the open palms of his hands and stars shining like pinheads against an ink black sky. </p><p>Quiet promises in voices he won’t let himself forget.</p><p>
  <i>I can do this.</i>
</p><p>Shiro sits with his back to the wall, eyes closed and elbows resting on his drawn-up knees, and keeps his breathing steady.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Kolivan stands beside him, hands clasped tightly behind his back, and Shiro has no choice but to keep his shoulders straight and look on helplessly as Keith takes a blow to the shoulder, stumbles, almost doesn’t get up again. </p><p>They should never have come here. </p><p>They should have left as soon as Kolivan told them to. </p><p>He should’ve dragged Keith back to the Red Lion kicking and screaming, and maybe then he wouldn’t have been forced to witness this. </p><p>But Keith had looked straight at him, steel in his eyes, and he’d squeezed Shiro’s left arm with a tight smile. </p><p>“Trust me?” he’d said, and Shiro had felt the words all the way down to his bones. </p><p>So Shiro stands, and he looks on with clenched fists as Keith’s injured arm gets twisted painfully behind his back and he falls to his knees. He watches as a copy of himself turns his back to Keith like he never, ever would.</p><p>He stands and does nothing, trusting Keith until the last possible moment, when the walls are shaking and the ceiling has started to cave in. </p><p>Then he fights his way to him. </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>They’re fighting. It’s getting more and more common these days. </p><p>The way Keith looks at him makes something twist unpleasantly in Shiro’s gut, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. He knows what needs to be done. He knows it can’t be helped.</p><p>His head is killing him again.  </p><p>“This is not up for debate,” he says, voice clipped, running a hand over his face.    </p><p>“I really don’t think–“ Keith starts, then cuts himself off abruptly, looking at Shiro with a strange expression. “Alright. Let’s do it your way,” he finishes instead.</p><p>Silence hangs between them for a moment. Keith’s frown softens into something more gentle.</p><p>“I trust you, Shiro.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>Somewhere far away, in the quiet place inside his head…</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Except that’s no longer where the place is. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>It stretches on as far as he can see; an endless sea of open, flat space, and nothing to draw the eye except for sparse patterns of milky fog and floating clusters of glimmering, winking lights. </i>
</p><p><i>It’s nothing like the desert, despite what Shiro might have told himself at first. The desert can be still, and vast, and overwhelming; but in the silent hours of the night, when you’re sitting outside after a long day in a spot far enough away from artificial light, exhaustion seeping into your bones, sometimes you’ll close your eyes and listen just right, and for a moment, you will hear it </i>breathing.</p><p>
  <i>(Sometimes, that breathing will match the one of the dark-haired boy sitting on the ground next to you.)</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He can hear nothing breathe in this place. Not even, Shiro thinks with a shudder, himself.   </i>
</p><p>
  <i>He can hear other things– murmurs and echoes that sound like they’re coming from somewhere close and impossibly far at once, and sometimes a low, deep rumble that reverberates through the air and through his chest and leaves him shaken and frantic and desperately aching for the touch of something solid, something real.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He can see things, too. Most of them are shadows, opaque shapes of what should be familiar. Some are much clearer. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>(He can see two boys sitting on cold sand, the space of a breath between them and wishing they were closer still.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It’s going to be fine,” the older one says. He folds his hands behind his head and lies down on his back, expert eyes scanning familiar stars. “I know I can do this. Just trust me.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The other boy looks down at him, and his smile does not waver. </i>
</p><p><i>“I do trust you.”)</i>     </p><p> </p><p>“Very well. Then it’s decided.”</p><p>Something else flickers across Keith’s features – something that looks disturbingly like hurt. </p><p>
  <i>(If somebody screams himself hoarse somewhere no one hear him, is he really making any sound at all?)</i>
</p><p>The man wearing Takashi Shirogane’s face turns his back to Keith and walks across the bridge.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've had this fic in my drafts for approximately six hundred years, haven't touched it in about as long, and yet I somehow still have feelings about Shiro. I miss him.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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